Genre: Dark Ambient/ Drone/ Experimental/ Soundscape

Track Listing:

01 Intro (Before The Collapse)
02 All das Irdische Leben
03 Frozen Summer
04 Silver
05 Schneekonigin
06 Die Leere Gedankenflut
07 Daily grind
08 Ich Irre Durch Den Tagtraum
09 Schweigen
10 Beschworung
11 Stay!
12 Outro


"Broken Summer", by Iri Li, is a really beautiful album that will thrill listeners into dark-ambient experimental music.

Iri Li is an artist/musician from Saarland, Germany and "Broken Summer" is her first solo album. She is a founding member of the "MEDUSADA" Movement, aka "cONTRA-aRT" (whose credo is "There are no limitations and there never should be limitations. If you find some barriers, remove 'em."), and co-founder of the label ContraMusikProduktion(CMP). She is also the other half of the duo, Infinitus Ensemble, who have been making experimental sounds since the late 1990's.

This CD was released in 2008 on the CMP label in a handsome digipack. The sepia cover photo, depicting leafless trees and snow, conjures the title very well, for the summer represented by this collection of compositions really is broken by darkness and cold. Although Iri Li plays most of the instruments here, Ralf Rabendorn, her partner in the Infinitus Ensemble, is credited for the "arrangements, mix and special sound manipulations". Rabendorn's gifts are amply demonstrated here, utilizing Iri's source recordings of violin, synths, theremin, gongs, singing bowls, bells, piano, voices, field recordings and more, he creates a vast sonic buffet of ambient melodic textures, strange noises, electroacoustic sounds, and vocal snippets. As you wind your way through this album's darkest passages it becomes clear that anything may happen, but none of it shocks, it all flows in a very natural and organic way.

"Broken Summer" is, in many ways, a sort of soundtrack for an imaginary film. The textures are constantly morphing from scene to scene, small, indefinable sounds entering the mix at different moments, passages of swirling tension rise and fall, noises appear then disappear. Some of the tracks, such as 'All Das Irdische Leben' have an avant garde classical feel, somewhat like Helmut Lachenmann's orchestral compositions. More melodic moments, such as those on 'Stay!', or 'Silver', still have enough experimentalism in the mixes to sustain interest for even the most well-worn ambient listeners. Even the sped-up voices on 'Ich Irre Durch Den Tagtraum' work well in this context, because of the fearless approach in which these elements are mixed so that they become, in another way of hearing, more of a surrealistic sound-experience. Plus, the album works on both levels, whether of active or passive listening. A nice one for the psychedelic experience and also excellent for creative endeavors... painters would enjoy this, I think.